Finally, the last day of our memorable campervan trip around New Zealand. I must confess to feeling sad at returning our vehicle. I had really enjoyed the experience of driving and living in a campervan. We had clocked up over 3,000 kilometres in 19 days by the time we returned our vehicle, but enjoyed every minute of it.

We took in a Hakka performance in our last evening at Christchurch (and New Zealand). It was obviously a performance put on for visitors like us by students, but as an introduction to the local culture, it was satisfactory.

After a short walk along the drive, we tasted the local delicacy – whitebait – from a roadside vendor. And as is usually the case with roadside vendors, the whitebait sandwich was delicious!

Our next halt was at Picton, from where the Interislander ferry departs for North Island. But that has to wait for our next trip to New Zealand!

We then drove past Blenheim to Omaka – the site of the most unusual attraction we visited. With help from Peter Jackson, the Kiwi director famous for The Lord of the Rings films, the Omaka Aviation Heritage Centre features a collection of original and replicas of WW1 aircraft. It was worth the detour.

We then drove past the famous Marlborough wine region, but a halt here was not on our itinerary. After a halt to watch seals at Ohau Point, we reached our last campsite at Kaikoura.

Jack Gasthof’s is a small, but stylish place started by Germans. The menu is international (nachos, pizzas, etc.) with a fair number of vegetarian options. They had a small bar area (closed in the mornings, with a great music system. The place reminded me a lot of shacks in Goa.

The food was delicious as well, and very reasonably priced.

After lunch, we left the coast, and made our way inland. The scenery was no different to what we had encountered in the past, and by now, we were beginning to get fatigued. So, after reaching our camping ground in Nelson, we really had no energy to go out for dinner.

After that, we made our way up the West Coast, to Punakaiki. Punakaiki is famous for it’s ‘pancake rocks’. And they are certainly worth seeing. In addition, maybe due to the warm sunny weather compared to the rest of the South Island, I found it to be one of the more beautiful places that we had visited this far on the South Island. Punakaiki is also the southernmost region in the world where palms go naturally. And this certainly helped add to the lazy, sub tropical feel of the place.

By the time we reached the glacier, the rains, which were forecast to hit by mid-day, come down right on schedule. Even with all our layers of clothing on, we were very cold. We spent close to an hour on the glacier, but were very happy to get off it towards the end!

By the time we got back to base, we were cold, tired and hungry. Luckily, the cafe at the glacier walk office had some good hot vegetarian fare that revived us.

The rain hadn’t eased at all, so we decided to do the short drive north to Franz Josef Glacier, and halt in a motel for the night. Sitting in the warm hotem room, watching TV, and listening to the rain pouring down outside, this turned out to be one of the smartest decisions we took on the trip!

This might be the most unique sights we visit during the trip, a collection of illusion rooms and an outdoor maze, with smaller puzzles that visitors can sit down and play with. The illusion rooms included ‘Following Faces’, where faces of famous personalities seem like ther are watching you from all angles, to ‘Holograph’ rooms, to ‘Ames’ room, which causes the illusion of normal people looking big or small. This technique apparently was used in the ‘Lord of the Rings’. Another room had the illusion of objects going against gravity, such as a ball rolling ‘up’ a slanted table, water flowing ‘up’ an incline, etc.

The maze was a difficult one, across 2 levels. We managed to crack the easier one in 40 minutes.

By then, we were feeling the effects of our first real ‘hot’ day of the trip, and made our way back to the campsite.

The walk was through local forests, and ended on the shores of the lake, from where one gets distant views of a couple of snow capped mountains. It was a pleasant walk, but nothing spectacular.

We then made our way back to Queenstown enroute to Wanaka. We took the shorter route via Cardrona. The initial section of the route was the steepest I had encountered thus far along the trip, but we were rewarded with some great alpine scenery.

We reached Wanaka around 6 PM, enough time for a walk around the town centre.

The bird centre was a small place with a few enclosures that support rare local birds. The rarest of which is the Takahe, a large waterfowl, of which there are less than 200 in the world. These were presumed extinct until being rediscovered in 1948.

Some of the other birds we saw included the Kaka, a parrot, parakeets and duck species.
The 32 minute film captures the grand scenery of the region. It is shot largely from the air and is accompanied by a background score incorporating some Mauri music. Definitely a must watch.

We then made the drive to Queenstown, the adventure capital of New Zealand. After the quietness of the places we had visited, the hustle and bustle of Queenstown did not appeal to us. We did do the touristy thing by eating the burgers at Fergburgers, considered by Lonely Planet to make the best burgers in New Zealand. They were good, and huge!

We had booked ourselves for a breakfast cruise. The breakfast was quite good, unfortunately, with the crowds, it took a while for us to eat breakfast and make our way above deck to take in the views.

And the views lived up to expectation – they were quite stunning. Steep cliffs rising straight out of the water and upto a mile high – it’s hard to grasp the sheer scale of the settings. Waterfalls that are 50 metres in height look like they can’t be much over 10 metres, dwarfed as they are by the water and the mountains.

The captain took us very close to one of the taller falls – over a 100 metre high. Close enough that we were drenched in the spray from the falls. We traveled the sound (technically a fjord) right up to the Tasman Sea, from where we had quite superb views back to the Sound.

We also visited the Discovery Centre, a 360 degree viewing cabin situated 10 metres under the water level. Milford Sound has a unique ecosystem because there is a layer of fresh water (due to all the rain) sitting atop the salty sea water. This layer reflects the sunlight back, which causes the sea water to be much darker at the same level that if there were no fresh water atop. This, in turn, enables organisms that would ordinarily only be seen at much deeper levels to be viewed much closer to the surface.

Milford Sound is one of the very few places where this phenomenon, called Fresh Water Emergence, occurs. And the discovery centre enables visitors to view this without getting wet. We got to see a wide variety of marine organisms, including sea urchins, sea cucumbers, black corals, and a few fish species. Very few people actually visit the Centre; I would strongly recommend taking the 45 minutes off to visit and view this quite unique spectacle.

On our way back to Te Anau, we stopped at a few places along Milford Road for short walks. The highlight was being able to observe Kea (the world’s only Alpine Parrot) from fairly close.